'Election Triad' cements director's place as mob-movie master

By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE P-I

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 14, 2007

The explosion of exuberant Hong Kong action cinema in the '80s and early '90s, all exhilarating, lunatic energy and creative audacity, put American action movies of the time to shame. Johnnie To's "Triad Election," a sequel to his "Election," is exhibit A in the case for the Hong Kong gangster film as the new genre standard.

The tight, well-honed story focuses on the shifting power dynamics of veteran triad chairman Lok (the insidiously charming Simon Yam) and young businessman Jimmy Lee (Louis Koo), a man desperate to shake off his triad past and go straight until circumstances force him to run against Lok.

The backroom brokering evolves in the hardball tactics of bribery, extortion, intimidation, kidnapping and murder, but To underplays the spectacle of the violence, favoring restraint over excess and irony over melodrama. He's more interested in the how the escalation reveals the character of the candidates.

The dialogue (especially in its simplified subtitle form) can seem naive and clumsy and the overheated reactions of some figures can be comically excessive compared to the dramatic restraint elsewhere. Behind these cultural conventions, however, is a drama rife with conflicted loyalties and compromised values in the face of ambition and power, as well as a cynical snapshot of the web of power, politics and crime between Hong Kong and mainland China.

In the hands of To, arguably the maestro of modern mob cinema, it becomes a modest but finely crafted chamber piece.